The Tea Party was founded—or at least seriously propelled—by trader, financial executive and TV reporter Rick Santelli, a grandson of Italian immigrants, on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Watch his original burst of moral outrage in this YouTube clip here.
Mr. Santelli did not invoke faith, God, religion, prayer or fasting. During his Tea Party comments, he did not advocate appeasing those who seek to mix religion and government. He did not denounce gays, stem cell research and a woman’s right to have an abortion. He did not propose that Americans rally behind tax hikes, TARP, bailouts, stimulus, ObamaCare or debt limit increases. He invoked Ayn Rand and held up a copy of her 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, calling for Americans to rally for free market capitalism. Making references to specific laws that destroy one’s ability to create, Mr. Santelli, a member of the mainstream media, it must be noted, urged Americans to oppose government control of the economy and instead fight for individual rights.
Yet conservatives, such as Sarah Palin, have grafted themselves on to the essentially secular, pro-capitalist, pro-individual rights Tea Party movement. Conservatives in government, including every major conservative today, have aided and abetted the rise of the omnipotent state by enacting every major new government control for the past 40 years.
Conservatives who betray the principles of both the original Tea Party in Boston and today’s movement do not belong in the Tea Party and those self-identified conservatives who do not betray America’s founding ideals are not conservatives. They are what Ayn Rand called radicals for capitalism. So, on this day of a faith-based Texas governor praying and fasting and failing to remember the Alamo, let the real radicals be heard. Let’s flush conservatives out, pledge to save the republic from totalitarianism, and turn the Tea Party on.